


Ghosted

by ScarletteStar1



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/F, Grief, Hannibal Rising References, Loss, Pain, Sorrow, sapphic tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-30 03:23:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20807717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteStar1/pseuds/ScarletteStar1
Summary: Chiyo is a bird. She flies.Bedelia is ice. She numbs.Hannibal is death. He haunts.





	Ghosted

**Author's Note:**

> My heart is so hurt. . . and so I've written this.

Chiyo is a bird. She flies.

Bedelia is ice. She numbs.

...........................

Once, Bedelia was also a bird, but she never quite learned the art of flying. So she froze herself to keep from feeling while she languished in her gilded cage. It was terrifying how naturally this gift came to her.

When Chiyo, with her glossy eyed beauty came, she stuck her fingers in between the bars, and clicked her tongue soothingly. Defying logic and nature, Bedelia’s pulse rose beneath the ice encasing it.

Grief and trauma bound them instantly. For a time, it seemed it would be enough. 

...........................

Together, they are a strange pair. Onyx and rose gold, they drift from place to place in luxury and rarely make eye contact with anyone beyond each other. The vocabulary within their throats is meager compared to the copious languages in which their bodies communicate with one another in the dark. Bedelia's fingers, skeletal though they may be, cast spells in the fertile delta between Chiyo's legs. And Chiyo's tongue draws out otherworldly songs as she suckles Bedelia's breasts. They gasp and bite and writhe and die so many little deaths. It almost makes them smile. It almost satiates their needs. 

Unwittingly, together, they possess all the ingredients of afterlife. Things initially binding begin to pull and suck them apart. 

...........................

Bedelia's eyes, stare, cool as morning sky in winter. At cliff’s edge she stands and wants to scream, but does not. When she traipses back to the cottage in the heather, she finds Chiyo has made breakfast. 

“I made biscuits from scratch. An old family recipe.” Chiyo’s low voice thrums though their kitchen.

“I don’t think I can eat,” Bedelia whispers.

“You must,” Chiyo insists. She stares out the window toward the sea from whence Bedelia has returned. “We are not yet ghosts, you and I.”

“You and I are not one and the same,” Bedelia murmurs.

"Weren't we once?"

"I think not." She plucks a berry from a bowl of fruit, inspects it and pops it between her lips as she walks past Chiyo and up the stairs to their room. She takes with her the scent of sizzled fat and warm dough baked into mounds of tasty, golden sustenance. Part of her wants to descend. Part of her wants to pull apart biscuits and dip them in butter and egg, sop them in grease until they are rich, then devour them.

But she fastens herself back into her cage, tucks into herself, or at least what is left of her. Deprivation is more than she believes she deserves, but she lies on her back and counts her ribs, then curls onto her side.

And waits.

Some time later, Bedelia senses Chiyo arrival at the door. 

“Do you ever feel this is some sort of purgatory we’ve created?” Bedelia faces the window, but she rolls toward the door to see Chiyo’s face, pinched as it is with some nameless emotion.

“Your words are few, but they wound just as sharply,” Chiyo breathes. She comes to the edge of the bed and sits in the spot created by the bend in Bedelia’s knees, places a hand on the crest of Bedelia’s hip, traces the bone with light, loving fingers.

“Better then you leave, so as not to inflict further harm upon yourself,” Bedelia says and turns back to stare out the window. The bile of regret and shame rises quickly in her throat. With quivering fingers, she touches the cartilage of her neck and closes her eyes, swallows back the burning. She imagines she sinks to the bottom of some deep and ancient well and does not realize she holds her breath until her eyes spring open and she gasps for air.

By then, Chiyo has left the room.

In fact, there is a sense, an airy panic that fills Bedelia’s rib cage in a chilly gust, that Chiyo has left the house all together.

Bedelia sits, mouth partially open, and shakes platinum silk from her forehead. She does not bother to look at the clock before she decides it is late enough in the day and rises from her bed for a glass of wine. Barefooted, she retraces her steps down the stairs. 

She exhales the tide of cool anxiety.

Chiyo sits, sultry as a shadow, lips painted a sparkling garnet and pressed together. Bedelia attempts to make her stride light, whimsical even. 

“Will you judge me?” She practically sneers at Chiyo as she twists screw into cork, extracts it with smooth expertise, and pours her glass.

“Never,” Chiyo whispers and looks as though tears might spill from her eyes. A muscular, golden visage rises between them. 

“Did you ever cry for him? With him?” Bedelia asks in a more moderate tone.

“No,” Chiyo answers resolutely. “But I did weep for what he lost and for what it cost him.”

“His sister? Mischa?”

“Yes.” Chiyo moves to a window. Bedelia senses Chiyo's feathers ripple with desire to fly far and fast into the horizon. “And then much later, my patron, Lady Murasaki. It was perhaps the purest love he knew after Mischa. Their spirits follow me.” Her breath clouds the glass pane before her.

“And you? What is the purest love you knew?”

“It was not Hannibal,” she turns to regard Bedelia’s icy gaze. 

“Hmm,” Bedelia murmurs.

“I don’t know where this jealousy has come from, but it is unwarranted. And it does not suit you,” Chiyo scoffs, her pretty brow furrowed into lines of concern.

“Ahh,” Bedelia’s lips curl in a wicked smile. She picks up the bottle of wine and her glass and wanders out of the room. Deep within her chest the want for something more swells. She might burst with it. Grasping the bath taps, she twists and a steady hush of heated water fills her pool. As the bath fills, she unbuttons her blouse and peels herself out of layers of skirt and hose until she is utterly pale and nude. She tips a bottle of jasmine oil and sprinkles droplets into the water. She steps into the tub and submerges herself in the steaming, fragrant water. Her skin pinks with heat.

Yet she is still so cold.

Chiyo does not come to bed at night. Nor does she come the next night. On the third night, Bedelia thrashes in her sheets as if they are tongues of fire. She does not sleep.

In the morning, when she goes downstairs, she finds Chiyo seated with her hands folded calmly in her lap.

“Where have you been?” Bedelia hisses and then notices the duffel bag at Chiyo’s feet.

“I wanted to at least give you the courtesy of goodbye,” Chiyo says. She’s pulled back her hair and her eyes glitter with purple shadow.

“Oh,” Bedelia gasps.

“In the beginning, I believed I could mend your heart, but then I learned your heart had been frozen and shattered into too many frozen shards for the likes of my mending. I tried, but with every attempt, all you did was cut me. I am sliced open, Bedelia. I bleed for you and you do not even care.” Chiyo stands. “Could I have tumbled you smooth like a stone I’d have stayed forever and rolled again and again over your jagged surface. But I fear it is all in vain. I wish you well.”

To the door, Chiyo walks with her bag shouldered.

Bedelia’s entire body shudders. “Please,” she whimpers. She grasps her silk robe at her sternum and flounders.

Mercifully, Chiyo turns. The leather of her jacket, although worn well, creaks with her motion. 

Perhaps in this moment, if Bedelia crosses the floor, pulls the raven into her and seeks her lips, the little bird will nest again with her, even in the cold. How succulent their kiss would taste, like a ripe and bursting raspberry. How they would fall apart for each other, bead by bead, like the sweet, crimson berry, beneath their tongues.

But for the drip of a tear down her cheek, Bedelia is caught in stillness.

So, Chiyo leaves.

...........................

In the days that follow, silence deafens Bedelia. She paces from room to room of the tiny house, certain she can force Chiyo to appear if she just thinks hard enough on it. She hates herself for this feeble fantasy. Her ears strain for a creaking floorboard or a squeaky door. She begins to despise the sound of her own breath.

Upon finishing another bottle of wine, she smashes it against the ruddy, brick hearth just to hear something. 

She neglects the fire.The cottage grows cold.

As hot as she makes the water in her tub, she cannot find a whisper of warmth for her wretched body. Eventually, prickling cold becomes aching numbness into which she settles, and she accepts Chiyo will not return. She resigns herself to monotonous and punishing lack of sound.

...........................

Under the winking gaze of stars at dusk, Bedelia makes her way down the path in the cliff to water’s edge. Wind whips her hair against her face. She steps into the sand and walks with determined confidence to the lapping space where land meets sea. She does not pause for even a moment, nor does she waste a beat of her heart on the freezing burn as water seeps through her clothing and anoints her flesh. She walks in until she is waist deep, and then she falls to float. At last, her icy heart feels at home.

She lies on her back and tries, with fingers she can barely feel, to count her ribs through the heavy, soaked material of her sweater. 

"What have we here?" Hannibal asks. He peers down at her from on high, his golden eyes glowing like honey in the dark. 

"She's left. She's gone. Disappeared," Bedelia mouths. "I wanted too much and I could not give enough."

"Your lips are an enchanting shade of blue," Hannibal chuckles. "They almost match your eyes."

She ignores him and says, "It's as though she never was here at all." 

"And so you've come once more to me for help?" Hannibal's voice is not unkind. 

"I don't know," Bedelia weeps and doesn't know if it is her own tears or the salt of the sea that assaults her tongue. 

Against the darkening wings of night sky, against the threatening pulsation of her dull loneliness, against the agonizing memory of Chiyo’s delicate arms and ivory skin, Bedelia closes her eyes. Against it all, she closes her eyes perchance to find the thing she so desires in her dreams.

“Oh, Bedelia,” Hannibal’s voice croons. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

**Author's Note:**

> "Never let it be said I was untrue. I never found a home inside of you. Never let it be said I was untrue. I gave you all my time." -- Dead Can Dance.


End file.
